SCAMMER ALERT.
I didn't expect to be talking about this, but i guess there are asshole people everywhere.

I stayed up late talking to a person who pretended to be an HR manager, but turned out to be one of the people in a team of scammers.

tl:dr version of events:

• updated linkedin last night and posted about being open to work
• almost went to bed but noticed an email in my inbox, opened it and it’s a recruiter telling me that he noticed my linkedin post and has an offer for me
• i replied to email, asking for job details
• job details were about a senior/lead engineer position in a wearable tech company to basically oversee and develop their apps for their fitness watch. I looked up company on google, found a bunch of mentions of their products in some places i recognised, but no actual website. company seemed to be a startup.
• recruiter said (in email) that if i’m interested he can pass me to hiring manager and i could present them with cv and get details about the position. In hindsight he seemed rather eager to hand me off to recruiting team.
• i agreed and got a link to ms teams contact who initially sounded polite and asked what position I'm applying for and said they need to ask few general questions first, like how i found out about company and if i knew about them and what attracts me in the job description.
In hindsight he didn't do a regular spiel about what their company is and how great they are like other HR did in my experience.
• after some back and forth he asked for CV and then asked if i have some official sounding documents (5 of them) that one would need for the process
• and in hindsight also asked what date suits me for interview and when i did ask about something else, he said "Thursday sounds fine", which felt a bit weird
• he asked again if i had those documents and i said no and he said he has a "professional" who would help me compose them
• and then insisted i talk to said professional who would sort me out, i said that it’s late and i’d prefer to talk next day but he insisted it’ll only take 5 minutes
• and to wrap it up short, he sent me link to chat with this professional also on ms teams
• I also asked HR guy to link me to the company website, which he said "sure" to and then went silent for a while.
• I introduced myself to the professional and they initially asked about job im applying to and my CV and after that said that i’ll need all of those 5 documents, and then asked what my budget is.
• when i said that i have 0 budget and would like to know their prices, they said that they charge 100$ per document and and kept insisting that i should find money to commission them
• i said i sadly cannot afford it and at that moment HR guy in another tab finally replied to my question about website which got me suspicious with him sending me first link that didn't work (website didn't exist) and then when i mentioned to him that link is broken, changing it to a completely different link which definitely could not be a typo.
• then HR guy asked me how it’s going with "professional" he recommended and when i said i don't have money to afford them, he was like " but we have an interview on Thursday remember and you’ll need those documents"
• when i didn't reply within a minute, he was like "hello are you still there?"

At that point i was suspicious enough of both of them to realise i'm being preyed upon with too good to be true job dangling in front of of my nose and that only thing i need to do to get it was to pay said "professional" for some documents that i can't even find names of on google...

Welp. Company i worked for during past 8 years is going down. Bosses in response to criticism of content and dwindling sales decided to chase ai slop instead of fixing the mess, despite many warnings from dev team. So on 30th of dec i got news that i'm technically being let go since they have no more money to pay me.

If anyone is looking for an experienced iOS/iPadOS/macOS native dev with 12 years of experience working in the field professionally, i'll be your man, i mean bat.